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Was Adorno trying to destroy the enlightenment? I have no idea on and not read the dialectic of enlightenment, just bits on negative dialectics and aesthetic theory, and some secondary sources. I'm not just asking why but also how and what.

  • maybe this question is just too "weird". i might delete? –  Dec 11 '22 at 01:27
  • See sec. 2 of ["Theodor Adorno"](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/#2). With some Horkheimer fellow, he wrote a book whose opening contains the following passage: "Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth radiates under the sign of disaster triumphant.” – Kristian Berry Dec 11 '22 at 02:27
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    The SEP articles continues: "Contrary to some interpretations, Horkheimer and Adorno do not reject the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Nor do they provide a negative “metanarrative” of universal historical decline. Rather, through a highly unusual combination of philosophical argument, sociological reflection, and literary and cultural commentary, they construct a “double perspective” on the modern West as a historical formation (Jarvis 1998, 23)." – Kristian Berry Dec 11 '22 at 02:28
  • Relevant: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/92675/according-to-horkheimer-and-adorno-how-is-the-enlightenment-dialectical/92686#92686 – Philip Klöcking Dec 11 '22 at 15:21

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